This is how it begins. The only way she can be with her.
Lilith can't tell where Maya ends and where she begins. And that's the way she needs it to stay.
A sharp intake of breath, followed by a soft groan. A quickly whispered apology. A hushed dismissal.
"I really wish you'd let me-"
"No, no, I'm fine... everything's... so perfect..."
The irony is that for all the times Maya has talked about how she despised being treated as a goddess back on Athenas, she delights while Lilith worships her like one, her head bowed as she kneels at Maya's feet, kissing her thighs.
Nothing else seems to matter and Lilith's senses are so focused. She shivers at the slightest touch, her eyes take in every contour, and every moan, every sigh, every breath assails her ears, and she welcomes it all. The nagging voice in the back of her head, for the moment, is gone. She took the eridium and all that mattered was that she had to have her. She needs her.
Lilith's better judgment would have told her this was a mistake, but her better judgment is locked away. Her words, her moves, her hands are all directed by pure lust, but her eyes betray the longing inside her. She wants to enjoy every second, and she never wants it to end, but she knows she has to push away those thoughts. She knows how fucked up she is, and if she lets Maya get too close, she could destroy her. And she will not allow that to happen.
Lilith gazes up at Maya. There is no heaven above her, not tonight. Her goddess sits on the bed before her, her porcelain skin glowing, and not just from the light pulsing from her azure tattoos.
She slides her right hand up, her fingertips caressing Maya's body, tracing the swirling markings on her side and her breast. Maya's hand guides Lilith's along her body, but when their eyes meet, Lilith slowly breaks the gaze, turning her head back down. She is simultaneously overwhelmed by the desire in Maya's eyes and afraid of what her own might reveal about her.
And nails graze flesh and Maya's thighs squeeze and she moans Lilith's name and Lilith has never felt so wanted, and oh please God, she doesn't ever want to make it stop...
Lilith wakes up first, in a cold sweat. She looks at her left hand, her fingers shaking. The familiar void at the pit of her stomach is back, clawing at her from the inside.
She watches Maya sleeping in front of her for a few minutes, studies the tattooed pattern on her back. Her hand hovers over Maya's bare shoulder, and she wants nothing more than to hold her, to stay there by her side. But the thought quickly overwhelms her. It can't happen that way, and she knows it.
She doesn't want to leave. But she must.
She starts to roll over, but a sharp pain in her side stays her. After catching her breath, Lilith slips out of Maya's bed as quietly as possible, gathers and slips on her clothes, and silently leaves the room, boots in hand.
Upon getting back to her room, the first thing she notices is the hole in her window, and last night's outburst replays in her head. She sets her boots down at the foot of her bed, then walks over to the desk, surveying the bits of broken glass on the windowsill. All of those beautiful, horrible, purple pieces of ore are somewhere down on the desert floor a few hundred feet below the floating city...
She shuts her eyes and shakes her head. She threw that out for a damn good reason.
But she's already starting to feel wound up again and all it takes is just a quick teleport down and she can feel so much better...
The hot sand feels nice on the soles of her feet. The heat would be too intense for most, but she pays it little mind.
She looks up at the massive floating city hanging almost directly over her head. It should be near here. Her eyes scan the featureless fine sand for a bright flash of purple, reflected in the sun.
It's a glint of silver that catches her attention. She walks over towards it and kneels down, brushing the sand off. The strongbox.
For some reason, she expected it to have been destroyed on impact. Instead, it's still intact, resting in a small crater in the soft sand. Some of the eridium is still inside, and several more nuggets rest nearby in the sand: much more than she thought she would be able to find.
Her tattoos glow. The eridium shrinks in her hands. Her pupils constrict. Her toes spread apart. Her head tilts back.
The pit in her stomach is filled, but the emptiness finds another place within her to grow.
Lilith closes her eyes as the water flows from the shower head and splashes onto her face. There are no tears for the water to mix with.
She tries to keep her mind off of last night, but it keeps replaying in her head. And as she thinks of it, a familiar feeling of self-loathing begins to take root.
She knows it shouldn't have meant anything, but she still feels dirty: not for the act itself, but the way she feels as if she's used Maya.
But if she knows they can't ever become more than they are now, why does she feel so guilty about it?
Before she can torture herself any more, she shuts the water off and towels off, re-bandaging her partially-healed bullet wound before putting some clothes on. They'll be landing Sanctuary in a few hours. And she'd better be there to make sure Scooter doesn't kill everybody trying to guide it into its old resting place. With the engines operational, she has no need to phase it back. And for that, she's thankful. She can't bear the thought of putting her friends in danger again, especially Maya...
She shakes her head, as if trying to knock the thought itself out of her brain. She can't allow herself to think like that. She won't allow herself to think like that. She has to stay focused, keep her mind off of last night.
That plan is almost immediately foiled when she opens the door and sees Maya standing on the other side, looking almost as surprised as Lilith is. "Oh. Hey."
"Hey," Maya says, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. "I woke up and you were gone... I thought I should check up on you."
"Check up on me?"
Maya glances sideways for a second, wondering why Lilith would ask such a seemingly obvious question. "Well, I just... you were really upset last night, and then... that all happened, out of nowhere, and..."
"I'm fine," Lilith assures her. Maya falls silent, then nods, apparently convinced.
"Okay. Well... the others and I are leaving in a bit... we have a few things to wrap up in Oasis and..." She rolls her eyes and sighs. "That Crater."
Lilith nods, and Maya has to bite her cheek to avoid showing her frustration.
"So I guess we'll probably be gone for a few days..."
All Lilith is able to allow herself to say is "Okay."
Maya's lips turn white as she presses them together, letting out a loud, frustrated exhale through her nose.
"Something wrong?"
"No. Nothing."
Lilith looks at Maya, badly wanting to lean in and kiss her and hold her in her arms, but a voice in the back of her mind keeps telling her She will never be enough to make you whole.
So she lets Maya wait for a confession that will never come, until her silvery-blue hair sways back and forth as she shakes her head. Maya turns on her heel and starts to walk down the hall, only to stop mid-stride and turn back around.
"At least let me heal you before I go," Maya half-pleads, gesturing towards Lilith's side.
Lilith sighs softly, then grabs the hem of her shirt and slides it up her body, not wanting to argue. Maya gets down on one knee and delicately removes the bandage before lightly placing her fingertips to the entry wound.
The familiar warming feeling ripples through Lilith's body and she leans her head back, letting the relaxing sensation wash over her. She feels Maya's fingertips slide over the exit wound, and she sighs softly as it too heals beneath her soothing touch.
Again, the feeling is gone all too soon, and Maya glides gracefully and confidently down the hall, around the corner, and out of sight.
Lilith shuts her eyes and leans against the frame of her door, putting a hand to her forehead, trying to quiet the voice in the back of her mind.
To everyone's great surprise (and perhaps his own most of all), Scooter manages to successfully negotiate Sanctuary back into its rightful place on the edge of the Three Horns Divide without injuring anyone or damaging the city itself in any significant way. Most of the town's citizens celebrate by venturing outside the city for the first time in weeks. Lilith celebrates by visiting Moxxi's bar.
The bartender flashes a smile at Lilith as she sits down and asks for a tequila with stactus fruit juice. "Comin' right up, sugar."
Lilith glances up uncertainly at Moxxi, feeling nervous about the grin playing across her heavily-made-up face.
"So... feel free to tell me I'm getting a bit too personal, here," Moxxi starts, placing a glass on the bar and pouring a shot into it. "...but what was going on with you and our Miss Maya last night?"
"That was nothing. Just a little misunderstanding," Lilith explains with a hand wave.
"Uh huh..." Moxxi doesn't sound the least bit convinced as she adds a hefty splash of stactus juice to Lilith's drink, then tops it off with some crushed ice and a quick squeeze of a lemon wedge. "So, you kissing her and then the two of you leaving like that was just... a misunderstanding, you said?"
Lilith greets Moxxi's sly smirk with a half-hearted grin. "We just... had a little talk. That's all."
"Mmm. If you say so, Lily."
Lilith lets out a small, grateful sigh as Moxxi glides out from behind the bar to wash tables. She doesn't want to lie about it. People are bound to talk anyway, but if she says something about it, then suddenly it will become real. And if it becomes real, then she won't be able to control it. And maybe it's that which frightens her the most.
As the next few days drag on, they all feel the same to her. At first, Lilith is grateful for the monotony, but even the comfort from that wears off not after long. She tries to distract herself by discussing strategy with Mordecai and Brick, but they have trouble coming to a consensus about what to do next. Brick is more interested in locating the other Vaults, while she wants to try reaching out to the Hyperion employees left on Pandora, to try and recruit them to their side just like Roland did with the men and women the Atlas corporation left behind. Mordecai, on the other hand, seems more hell-bent on eradicating the mega-corporation's presence on the planet, including the "eyesore" hovering over the planet's moon. She tries to convince him that the Hyperion satellite can be a major asset to them if they're able to overtake it, but he's still so blinded by rage for what they did to Bloodwing that he won't accept anything less than utter annihilation.
Deciding it's not worth the headache, she resolves not to discuss their upcoming strategy with those two until the rest get back from their trip.
She uses before going to bed, and falls asleep thinking about Maya's lips, wondering if she would have been better off had she never kissed them.
"I say we focus on their main factory, out in The Barrens," Axton says, tapping the glass surface. A hologram pops up above the map, showing a model of the Hyperion factory. "We take that out, we take out the bulk of their military presence here."
"Going in there with what little forces we have now is a suicide mission," Mordecai says, a half-empty bottle of rakk ale in his hand.
Five of the other Vault Hunters stand around the table in a loose circle. Krieg and Zero aren't at the meeting: Zero hadn't come back with the rest from Oasis, leaving them with just with a cryptic message about a wolf stalking its prey that nobody really understood, and a promise that he would return; Krieg was in Sawtooth Cauldron with some of Brick's Slabs, claiming the territory as their own. Under the cover of nightfall, the Sawteeth are unprepared, and Krieg and the Slabs won't stop until the Slab flag flies over the entire crater.
"He's right," Lilith says, folding her arms over her chest. "That place is shut down heavier than Knoxx's armory."
"I wanna take 'em down as bad as you do, amigo," Mordecai says to Axton, "but we gotta be smart about how we do this."
Axton nods, switching the hologram between a few smaller outposts and depots. "So you're sayin' we start choking them out. Take out the smaller targets, exhaust their supplies. Not quite as big a statement as blasting down the front door, but I guess it could work."
"How big of a statement do we need?" Gaige asks. "We already killed their friggin' President."
"Fair point."
"I wouldn't mind exploding that thing covering up la luna," Salvador growls, looking out the window up at the same moon he used to watch as a child.
"Oooohohohohhh, now that would be a statement!" Gaige squeals with a maniacal giggle.
The screens above the command map flicker, and a video feed of Mister Torgue shows up on them. "DID SOMEBODY SAY SOMETHING ABOUT BLOWING SH*T UP?"
"Not now!" Mordecai shouts back.
"MAKE SURE TO KEEP ME APPRISED OF THE SITUATION!"
"You'll be the first to know once we make plans to blow shit up," Lilith says, then flicks the screens off. "Now. Where were we?"
"I dunno, I lost track... Oh, by the way," Axton says, a thought suddenly jumping into his mind. "Hammerlock wanted to take us on some kind of hunting trip, so... we'll be heading out tomorrow."
Lilith's eyes flicker up towards him. "What? You just got back yesterday! Can't that wait?"
"He said there have been reports of a lot of rare creatures that he wants to track down," Axton explains. "I would've liked to spend more time back here, too, but... well, it'll just be a few days."
Lilith runs her left hand through her hair. A few days. Another few days. She chances a sideways glance at Maya, and she feels her heart skip a beat when she sees Maya staring back at her out of the corner of her eyes.
"Okay, so we'll have some more time to figure this out while you all go kill uglies," Mordecai says.
Lilith's gaze tracks down to the exposed skin on Maya's left hip. She shuts her eyes and takes a deep breath, and when she opens her eyelids again she sees Maya grinning slyly back at her.
"We'll get somethin' hammered out, don't worry," Brick says confidently.
She'll never be enough to make you whole
Lilith angrily shuts her eyes and tries to focus on the conversation to drown out the little voice in the back of her mind.
"Something more than just punching the problem until it goes away," Mordecai adds. Brick and Salvador both look disappointed.
"Well. We've all got a long day ahead of us," Maya says, looking around the room. As her eyes fall on Lilith, she adds, "Maybe we should all get to our beds."
Lilith quickly looks up at Maya. A few of the other Vault Hunters mumble in agreement. Lilith just stares at her intensely, at the almost imperceptibly small smile playing across her blue lips.
Lilith watches as Maya quirks an eyebrow at her, then turns and walks confidently out of the room. One by one, the others leave, until Lilith is left standing there alone, her heart racing and her head spinning.
She'll never be enough
Lilith doesn't care. She can't stop thinking about that look, that confident smirk. She heads back to the living quarters, turning left instead of right in the hallway.
The door to Maya's room is cracked open.
Lilith lets herself in, closing the door behind herself. She is powerless to resist the flesh, the slowing of time, the opportunity to be sanctified by Maya's touch.
And time nearly stands still and they are all that exists and Lilith is made real and, please, please, please, she doesn't ever want to make it stop...
Lilith is the first to wake up again. She stands by the door for seven whole minutes, watching Maya sleep, before she hangs her head and quietly slips out.
She gives her strongbox a glance upon getting back to her room, but decides to get into the shower without using.
She spends longer than she knows she should in the shower. She knows Maya will have left for Aegrus by the time she gets out. And she wants to see her off, to say goodbye, but she wouldn't have the slightest clue what to say.
Shivering, she turns the hot water up even more than usual.
"Axton ECHOed in. He said they'll be back tonight."
Mordecai's words are all that Lilith has been able to think about all day. They've been in Aegrus for two more days than they planned. Lilith is nervous.
Lilith isn't worried about how Maya will react when she gets back. Lilith is worried about how Lilith will react when Maya gets back. She knows she wants to see her again. But not knowing how she'll react when she lays eyes on her makes Lilith's stomach churn.
As the sun sets, Lilith pays a visit to Moxxi's for a drink to calm her nerves. It's the first time she's been in the bar since Moxxi was prying for information about her night with Maya over a week earlier. Lilith is still a bit bitter about that. Even though she knows Moxxi didn't mean anything by it. It is Moxxi's business to know these kinds of things, after all.
The bartender gives her a coy grin as she pours her a drink, but sensing that Lilith isn't in much of a mood for conversation, Moxxi decides just to ask her how she's doing and keep it at that. Lilith can't help but wonder if that's because of how she reacted earlier. She drums her fingertips restlessly on the bar top. Moxxi focuses on cleaning the bar top while she casts a sideways look at Lilith's jittery fingers. She's been chewing her nails again. Terrible habit.
Lilith isn't left alone with her thoughts for long before Moxxi quietly says, "Now here's somebody I'm glad to see..."
"Drinks are on me tonight!"
Lilith recognizes the voice as Axton's without even needing to turn around. As the other bar patrons erupt in a cheer, she raises her empty glass in Moxxi's direction, and the bartender takes out a clean one to pour her another drink.
"Good trip?" Moxxi asks Axton as he sits one stool away from Lilith.
"Crashed drop barge means an armory," Axton explains as Moxxi pours him his usual Red Skag and coke. "And an armory means a few fun new weapons, and a helluva lot more to sell."
Lilith slowly looks over at Axton. "Drop barge? I thought Hammerlock was taking you all on a hunting trip."
"I did," Hammerlock's voice pipes up as he assumes his usual spot beside the bar. "Unfortunately our excursion was delayed by this Nakayama fellow, who was probably the worst excuse for a villain this galaxy has ever seen."
"Nakayama?" The name sounds vaguely familiar to Lilith, but she can't place it.
Axton clears his throat and answers. "Some Hyperion douche who thought Jack was a god or some shit. Imagine that." He laughs and downs the rest of his drink, then signals Moxxi to refill the glass. "Some nobody treating someone else like a god. Thanks, Moxx."
Lilith stares down at her drink, rubbing the back of her neck.
"Uh, no offense to your... uh, cult, I guess," he adds, misinterpreting Lilith's body language. "That wasn't your fault."
"Right. Don't worry about it," she says, keeping her head turned down.
"Did you really need to bring that up, Axton?"
Lilith instinctively turns at the sound of Maya's voice.
"I said I was sorry!" Axton protests.
"No, you said 'no offense'."
Axton leans his head back in exasperation, looking up at the ceiling. "Alright, Lilith, I'm sorry I brought that up." He looks over his shoulder at Maya, and she gives him a small nod.
Lilith offers her a grateful smile, but Maya just slowly heads out the side door.
She downs the rest of her drink and gives a quick thanks to Axton for his generosity. She tries to look casual as she takes the side exit, but can't shake the nagging feeling that Moxxi is watching her leave.
"You look horrible," are the first words Maya says to her when Lilith catches up.
"Nice to see you, too."
"Are you feeling alright?"
Lilith grabs onto Maya's shoulders with quivering hands and looks into her silver eyes. "Better by the minute," she whispers, pressing her lips to Maya's. She doesn't care if anyone sees. Not now.
Maya gently places her hands on Lilith's shoulders and pushes apart.
"What's wrong?"
"I need you to promise me something," Maya says, looking into Lilith's wide, curious eyes.
"What is it?"
"Promise me... Promise me if you stay with me tonight... you won't be gone when I wake up."
Lilith shuts her eyes, bows her head, and promises.
Maya is the first to wake up this time. She glances over her shoulder, and is almost surprised to see Lilith lying beside her. Maya rolls over to face her and watches her sleep. She can't bear to wake her up, not when she looks so peaceful. So she waits.
When the redhead's eyelids flutter open, Maya plants her elbow on the bed and props her head up with her hand. Lilith looks at her curiously, rubbing her bloodshot eyes.
"Good morning," Maya says softly, raising her right hand to brush some hair out of Lilith's face.
"Mmm. Morning," Lilith mumbles.
"Sleep well?"
"Better than usual." Both women are surprised by Lilith's sudden honesty.
"How are you feeling?"
Lilith's eyes narrow slightly as she tries to parse the question. "About... what, last night?"
Maya's lips curl into a small grin, but she shakes her head. "I mean you're shivering," she says softly.
Lilith looks down as she feels Maya's hand slide gently onto her own.
"When was the last time you used?"
"Not long before you got back."
"Is that why you left? The other times?"
Lilith casts her eyes down. "Is that why you made me promise to stay here?"
"I had to be sure."
Lilith summons the courage to look back up into Maya's eyes. "Sure of what?" she asks, her voice timid.
"That you weren't ashamed of this. Of us. Of me."
Lilith shakes her head. "Never."
"I know," Maya whispers with a smile.
Maya brushes the redhead's cheek with her thumb. Her blue lips part briefly, and Lilith closes her eyes, bracing herself for the words she's been terrified to hear.
"I want us to be more than this."